2010 is an extremely exciting year to be alive in – if nothing else it just looks futuristic – 2010. And indeed it is futuristic, with battery and processor technology advances we are finally seeing useful, portable tablet computing such as that seen in SciFi for decades. Data can be accessible anywhere for FREE using ‘cloud’ services such as SkyDrive, Google Docs, Flickr, Picasa, DropBox. With flat panels everywhere, touch screens becoming main stream and now even 3D hitting the general market…..we really are living in Gene Roddenberry’s world and holodecks surely can’t be too far away. Never before have we been as functional and capable while away from our homes and offices, never before has technology been so mobile and accessible, and what isn’t cool about saying you’ve got an Android in your pocket! We truly live in halcyon times in the year 2010.
There is a ‘small’ company however in Cupertino, a company that shutters out technological advances made by other companies, a company that believes user functionality in their product is a privilege and not a right, a company who believes bringing 7 year old technology to the market is revolutionary and somehow changes everything….again.
It may have just been me, but the iPhone 4 release video was offensive on sooo many levels. I’m surprised they didn’t cite creation of the universe as something they’ve done as they were taking credit for pretty much everything else, video chat, video recording (on the 3GS), folders, a camera flash, application stores - c’mon guys wake up to yourself.
Living in a country where 3G Video calling has been around since 2003, and the general uptake of it is fairly minimal the quote “Even if facetime were the only new feature we were delivering, this would be an amazing new iPhone” is just laughable – especially as they go on to talk about the mobility of it being in your hand IF you’re in WiFi. In other words a 7 year old Motorola with 3G video calling would have served me better in the hardware store when asking my wife which kitchen tap fitting she wanted than the ‘revolutionary’ FaceTime. Which brings me onto the ridiculous moniker ‘FaceTime’ – who invented that, Barney Stinson? Sorry NPH, I take that back….Barney would have something much cooler than FaceTime.
Ii its nice to see them trying to compete with Google’s Android OS introducing features new to iPhone such as Folders, Direct Dial Shortcuts, Widg…..oh, sorry, no widgets – maybe iOS5 Steve? It’s OK, it’s only your 4th attempt….it did take 11 Apollo missions to put a man on the moon…if NASA could do it I’m sure you can as well.
From a hardware perspective it looks like they might have done a really nice job, some really good ideas in a slick package. Personally I’d still rather have a real keyboard but then again I’d also rather have an Android. Apple, call me when you’re ready to stop playing games, stop drip feeding us features and build a serious OS. We know from our jailbreaking friends that iOS is capable of so much more – stop being a prisoner to AT&T’s demands and serve the remaining 5 billion people that don’t live in the USA.
